UPA Intensifies Attacks on Education.
HAVING tasted electoral victory for once, the Congress party, the leader of the coalition ruling the centre, has stepped up its neo-liberal onslaughts on the people with a vengeance. The sector of education is no exception to the virulent policy regime the UPA 2 is seeking to foist upon the country since the last Lok Sabha elections. The lawyer turned HRD minister Kapil Sibal is now in charge of implementation of the UPA government’s evil neo-liberal designs in the field of education. With the Foreign Education Providers Bill, all set to be introduced in the parliament in the coming days, higher education in this country is going to be further entrapped in the web of money minting institutions with the backing of indulgent governments.
GOVERNMENT’S
THINKING
As the cabinet has already given its nod to this bill, the government may introduce it in the ongoing session itself. It needs to be kept in mind that this is not the first attempt to introduce this bill. During the UPA 1 regime, its ministers had already burnt much of their midnight oil to get it introduced in the last Lok Sabha. Their planning was to introduce the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operation, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill 2007 in Rajya Sabha in the first week of May 2007. But strong opposition from the Left parties and the democratic movement stalled any such move.
However, now that the strength of the Left has come down in parliament, the Congress-led UPA appears to think that now it has a golden opportunity to pass this bill and thus open the gates of Indian education wide for the plunderers.
Corporate media and the chest-thumping neo-liberal ‘think-tanks’ have once again openly come out in support of the government’s move, propagating that it would be in everyone’s interest if the bill gets passed. One would really like to know from these people whether those 77 per cent of the people of this great country, who can earn a measly 20 rupees a day on all their needs, would be counted in that ‘everyone’ or not.
THEIR
ARGUMENTS
Among other things, the following have been the arguments of the bill’s supporters.
1) Foreign institutes would invest in the country’s education sector and thus the higher education sector would get expanded in India.
2) Indian students will be able to get quality education at cheaper rates, and that too in their own country.
3) With competition increasing, the overall level and quality of education would improve.
4) Teachers in countries like the USA, Canada and Saudi Arabia get as salary up to four times what the teachers in India get. With the foreign institutes coming to India, there are prospects of much better salaries accruing to Indian teachers as well.
5) A considerable section of Indian students go abroad to get foreign degrees. Now, as they would have comparable institutes in India itself, their emigration would stop and the outflow of foreign exchange will stop or at lest come down.
As this is an issue which is going to affect each of us, we must carefully examine each of these arguments...................... (CONT.)............ 2
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